Strategy did not buy or sell any bitcoin last week, leaving its holdings unchanged at 845,050 BTC, according to a Tuesday 8-K filing with the SEC. Instead, the company repurchased $176.3 million of its STRC preferred shares and doubled its digital credit securities repurchase program to $2 billion, while also pushing back against an MSCI proposal that could exclude bitcoin treasury firms from major indexes.
Strategy paused its weekly bitcoin purchases just one week after resuming them, according to an 8-K filing with the SEC. The company's holdings stayed flat at 845,050 BTC, worth $66.1 billion at current prices. That stake is equivalent to more than 4% of bitcoin's 21 million supply cap.
Instead of buying bitcoin, Strategy repurchased 1.81 million STRC preferred shares for around $176.3 million. It also increased its digital credit securities repurchase program to $2 billion from $1 billion. The firm funded the repurchases through its USD Cash reserve, which stood at $1.44 billion as of Sept. 7, alongside a separate USD Reserve balance of $5.1 billion.
A brief return to buying
The pause follows a short resumption of purchases. Strategy had acquired 4,603 BTC for approximately $369.7 million between Aug. 24 and Aug. 30 at an average price of $80,318 per bitcoin, after CEO Phong Le said the company's earlier sale of roughly 7,000 BTC at $60,000-$65,000 to fund preferred dividends was the right trade at the time. That sale had come during a roughly ten-week pause in bitcoin purchases while Strategy reduced net debt from about $7 billion to zero and built roughly $7 billion in total cash reserves.
Strategy also halted the at-the-market sale of its MSTR shares that it had used to fund bitcoin purchases and STRC buybacks. It had sold 4.53 million MSTR shares for $602 million two weeks earlier under that program.
MSTR and STRC diverge
MSTR stock has surged 45% over the last month, tracking bitcoin's rebound from roughly $63,000 to as high as $82,000. Shares remain down more than 7% year-to-date despite that rally. The Block put the stock's weekly gain at 6.6%, closing Friday at $142.80. MSTR shares are still 56.7% negative over the past year, even after the recovery. Bitcoin itself rose 1.8% during the same period.
The STRC preferred stock, meanwhile, is trading around $97, just below its $100 par value, after rebounding more than 5% over the past month from a yearly low near $76 set in June.
Strategy fights MSCI exclusion push
Strategy also hit back against an MSCI proposal to exclude "non-operating asset" companies from the MSCI Global Investable Market Indexes, calling it a disguised effort to remove digital-asset treasury firms from the indices. In a letter signed by Saylor and Le, the company said the consultation "is discriminatory, arbitrary, and misguided" and should be withdrawn.
According to Bitcoin Treasuries data cited by The Block, 197 public companies have adopted some form of bitcoin acquisition model, with Twenty One, Metaplanet, MARA, and Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company rounding out the top five holders behind Strategy.
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